


Triptych

by feelslikefire



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fantasy, Heavy Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, moderate gore, themes of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 10:33:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16742359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelslikefire/pseuds/feelslikefire
Summary: Victor is a human; Yuuri is a fae. Relationships between the two are always doomed to end in disaster, but true love is stronger than any magic — even death.





	Triptych

**Author's Note:**

> **READ ME!!**
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> Please note that I **chose not to use archive warnings.** I did use other tags; you should read them. 
> 
> If you want more spoilers than that, [click here for full spoilers](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/195427555). If you just want a bit of reassurance, just know I only write happy endings. 
> 
> I wrote this for issue 2 of the YOI Lit Mag, Shall We Read? I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to write something different and special. I hope you like it.

“Yuuri?”

Victor’s soft voice comes to Yuuri through the cracked door to the living room. Yuuri’s stomach tightens; he glances up, sees Victor standing there in the doorframe, half-lit by the fire Yuuri sits beside. The flames throw flickering shadows over Victor’s body, casting his face in a strange light—his skin too grey, his eyes too dark in the hollows of his face. His silver hair drapes dull and lifeless over his forehead. Yuuri can see how angular his cheekbones are, his handsome smile now a ghoul’s leer. 

Yuuri shivers. “Yes?” he says. His voice is too loud in the darkness. 

“Ah, good, you’re still awake.” Victor comes into the room, shutting the door behind him. He draws closer, and Yuuri nearly shudders with relief at how much more human Victor seems again now that he’s better illuminated. 

“I would have thought you’d be asleep, yourself,” Yuuri says. He smiles. 

Victor smiles back, but there’s a hesitancy to it that Yuuri doesn’t like. “You know, I really haven’t been sleeping much the past few weeks,” he says lightly. “And I have the strangest dreams when I do.”

Chill wind breathes down the back of Yuuri’s neck; all of his hair stands on end. He swallows. “Oh?”

“Yes,” says Victor. Victor takes the stool next to Yuuri’s chair, reaching over to gather one of Yuuri’s hands in both of his own. Even here, just feet from the fire, Victor’s hands are just this side of too cold. Yuuri has tried his best to fix that, but, well. 

“Sometimes I dream of a tree,” Victor says. “It’s a beautiful tree, tall, with silver branches and gold leaves. And you, you’re always there, too, standing right in front of the tree.” He hesitates a moment, then adds, softer, “You’re crying.”

Yuuri tries to swallow. There’s a lump in his throat, though, and he can’t make his muscles work past it. “That’s silly,” he says. “Why—What reason do I have to cry?”

Victor’s smile returns, but it’s softer now, sad. “That’s what I said,” he says. “But sometimes I dream of something else, a different part of the woods.”

The dread that’s been gathering in Yuuri’s chest coalesces into a dark cloud. His throat closes; for several seconds he can’t even breathe. He can’t tear his eyes away from Victor’s, either, and as he stares at his love, Yuuri can’t help but observe how those bright blue eyes seem clouded now, a scum of white overlaying the brilliant blue that once was so clear. 

That, too, is his fault.

“In these dreams I’m always walking,” says Victor. “But I can’t seem to see my feet or hands. It’s like I’m not really there, or I’m just observing, or something. But I always come to a river. And when I follow the river, I see an island in the middle of it. I float across to the island, and there’s not much on it aside from a little white cross.”

The dread in Yuuri’s heart deepens. He can’t even speak, can only listen as Victor continues to talk. Victor’s smiling, the same sweet smile Yuuri has always loved so much—and behind it is the obstinacy, the determination that has been their mutual undoing. 

Yuuri has never had the strength to resist Victor when Victor wants something, wants to do something. He’s never been able to tell him no. He wonders, now, if things would be different if he’d been strong enough to do so. 

“Do you know whose name is on the cross, Yuuri?” Victor says gently. Yuuri squeezes his eyes shut. “My Yuuri, please…”

“It’s just a dream, Victor,” Yuuri says shakily. He forces himself to open his eyes again, feels tears trickle down his face as he does so. Victor reaches up, brushing some of the tears away with his fingers, and Yuuri knows Victor does not believe him.

“What would I find if I went to that grave? Please, don’t… don’t lie to me.”

Yuuri lets out a choked little sob. The scarf he’s been knitting falls from his hands, the magic he’d been weaving into it to keep the wearer warm and dry breaking too, scattering away in a little flourish of light and warmth. “Nothing is there, Victor,” he says helplessly. “There’s nothing there.”

Victor says nothing, just watches Yuuri’s face, and suddenly Yuuri realizes it: Victor has already been to the grave in the middle of the woods. 

Yuuri sags, the strength running out of him. He slumps forward, his face in his hands, his spine bowed like Atlas under the crushing weight of his burden. Yuuri feels Victor’s touch, gently pulling Yuuri’s own hands away from his face so that he can cradle Yuuri’s cheek in one cold palm.

“Please tell me,” he says quietly. “Please don’t make me ask again, Yuuri. I beg you.”

Yuuri leans into his touch. Cold as his beloved’s hands are now, they are still the only thing to ever make Yuuri feel like home. He lets out a soft, choked sigh, knowing he can no longer put this conversation off. He’d hoped they might have a little more time, but he should have known that even changed as he is, Victor would be too clever and willful to live with the lie. 

“Do you remember,” he says tiredly, “the promise you made me the first time you found me in the woods?” He tilts his head, looking up to meet Victor’s gaze, and sees those cloudy eyes blink.

“Of course I do,” Victor says. He sounds puzzled. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Yuuri shakes his head a little. “You can’t make promises like that to a witch and expect nothing to come of it,” he says.

* * * * *

The first time Yuuri met Victor was an accident.

Yuuri was just resting that day, lingering by a clear stream in the middle of a deep woods. He was only passing through, on his way from Queen Mab’s lands to somewhere far enough away from her wars that he could go unnoticed. Like all of the fae, Yuuri has spent his life wary of humans, always giving them a wide berth for fear of attracting their curiosity or ire. 

So when a stag bounded through the clearing Yuuri was resting in, followed closely by huntsman on a runaway brown stallion, Yuuri vaulted to his feet, an instant from calling the wind to sweep him away into the woods. That is, right until the huntsman cracked his face against a low-hanging tree branch and toppled out of his saddle like a sack of bricks. The stallion had reared, eyes rolling wild in its head, and torn off into the woods. The rider, meanwhile, had stayed prone in the thicket where he’d been thrown. 

Yuuri had been left standing frozen in the center of the clearing and staring in dismay at the unconscious human with his legs sticking out of the bushes. That moment of weakness was what doomed him—he should have simply vanished when given the opportunity, should have left the stupid huntsman to fend for himself. 

But he was too soft-hearted. Yuuri had crept over into the bushes, telling himself he would just check and make sure the idiot human wasn’t too grievously injured. He’d crouched over the man, checking him for obvious injuries. He’d just stayed there for a moment, brushing leaves out of the human’s face and thinking to himself how handsome the huntsman was, with his long silver hair and broad shoulders—

—and then the human’s eyes had opened, and Yuuri had found himself frozen, caught and held by bright blue eyes. “Hello,” said the human, and gave him a dazed smile. Yuuri found himself thinking that those eyes were the color the sky must have been at the dawn of time. He’d never seen anything like them in all his long life. “Are you a dream?”

Yuuri couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe,” he’d said, returning a shy smile of his own. “You certainly hit your head hard enough to be dreaming.”

The huntsman made a mournful noise. “How tragic,” he said. He reached out, gently taking one of Yuuri’s hands in both his own before dazzling Yuuri with another sweet smile. “Then I hope I never wake up.”

 _You need to run, now,_ whispered a voice in Yuuri’s mind, one that sounded very like his old teacher. _Before the human bewitches you._ But even then, Yuuri knew it was already too late. He rolled his eyes, unable to keep the smile from his own face, and leaned closer. “I think you hit your head too hard,” he’d murmured. 

The huntsman had reached up one hand then—Yuuri would always remember how gentle his touch was, as if afraid that Yuuri would flee if startled—and cradled Yuuri’s face in his hand, staring at him with undisguised wonder. “I should hit my head more often,” he said solemnly. “Although I do not suppose I will catch the stag I was hunting.”

Yuuri had reached up, covering the huntsman’s hand with his own smaller one. “I guess today just wasn’t your lucky day,” he said, very softly. 

The huntsman sat up, carefully, pushing up with his other hand so that he was just inches from Yuuri’s face. “I think I have to disagree,” whispered the huntsman. Their eyes never left each other’s, even as the huntsman leaned in, tilting his head oh-so-slightly, giving Yuuri every chance to run, to stop him, to get away. Yuuri took none of them. 

Instead, he leaned in too, closing the last half-inch and pressing his mouth to the strange, beautiful human’s. After that, there was no discussion of luck, or stags, or dreams. Instead of continuing on his journey, Yuuri made love to a complete stranger on the forest floor, their mingled cries lost to the branches waving gently in the breeze overhead. It wasn’t until after they were done, their naked, sweaty bodies tangled together in contentment lying on the human’s cloak, that Yuuri even found out his name.

“My name is Victor Nikiforov,” said the huntsman. He’d taken Yuuri’s hand in his and kissed Yuuri’s palm, reverent as a priest reciting a benediction. 

Yuuri had blushed, embarrassed. “You can call me Yuuri,” he said. He kept his voice soft, private. Not that there was anyone else to hear, but he was somehow fearful of breaking whatever spell had brought this man his way, whatever blessing had let their paths cross. 

“Yuuri,” Victor repeated solemnly. “I’m so lucky to meet you, my Yuuri. I don’t know how you found me, but I hope you’ll give me the chance to get to know you.”

Yuuri hesitated. “I,” he began, faltering as Victor’s face fell. “I should really go…”

“Please stay,” Victor whispered. “Please don’t leave.”

“It’s not safe for me here,” said Yuuri helplessly. “I’m not—” 

“I’ll protect you.” Victor sat up, eyes bright. “I won’t let anything keep us apart, Yuuri. I swear it.”

Yuuri should have laughed at this ridiculous proclamation. He should have gotten up and dressed himself and vanished into the woods, and wiped Victor’s mind clean of this day, just to be safe. But he couldn’t. All he could do was sigh, and let Victor pull him close, and sink into those sweet, drugging kisses. And when Victor had asked if Yuuri would come with him back to his village, Yuuri agreed.

Victor had beamed, watching Yuuri with those bewitching eyes of his. Victor was human, Yuuri thought, but there was magic in him. Some long-ago witch had married one of Victor’s charming ancestors, as unable to resist them as Yuuri was unable to resist their great-great-grandson now. 

But even as they packed up their things and set off together in the woods, a chill wind had blown icicles down Yuuri’s back—there for a moment and then gone, just a whisper of ill tidings. Yuuri should have known then that it wasn’t him who would need protecting.

It was Victor.

* * * * *

They had a whole year together: one sweet, perfect, aching year.

It didn’t take Victor long to figure out that Yuuri wasn’t human. Yuuri expected that to be the end of it, expected his charming human lover to realize his own danger and take his leave from Yuuri’s arms, but he never did. If he cared about Yuuri’s fae nature, he never let on. There was never one moment where Yuuri felt doubt or restraint in Victor’s touches, his kisses, the warmth of his hands, his smile. 

His village, on the other hand, didn’t care for Yuuri. Victor never came out and announced that Yuuri was other than human, but it was hard for a fae to live long among mortals and stay truly unnoticed. But the other people in their village had just as much a soft spot for Victor as Yuuri did—no one was ever willing to come out and tell Victor his chosen partner was dangerous, that he should let Yuuri go. Even so, Yuuri never came out in the village much by himself, unable to ignore the baleful glares directed at his back wherever he went.

For his own part, Yuuri kept looking for a good reason to leave Victor, to quietly end their affair and let his human live out a normal life, but he never seemed to be able to find one good enough to justify the devastation he knew he’d cause. 

Because they were so, _so_ in love. 

Victor loved to bring him presents—flowers, clothes, jewelry, fresh baked bread. He loved dancing, also, always dragging Yuuri out into the middle of the floor at the inn when there was a fete or a fair, laughing and twirling them together as cleverly as any magic Yuuri could call. But his favorite activity (and Yuuri’s too) was to simply go out into the forest together and pass the time together, tangled in each other’s arms, talking or making love or simply resting. 

Yuuri was no better than Victor when it came to wanting to please his partner or show his love. One day, some four months after Victor came into his life, Yuuri surprised his lover with a pair of matching rings. 

Victor’s eyes had gone wide, his delight transforming him from handsome into breathtaking. “Is this an engagement ring, Yuuri?” he’d asked. His voice was soft, intimate.

Yuuri smiled. “It’s more than that,” he said, suddenly shy. “It’s a promise.” Victor raised his eyebrows at Yuuri, and Yuuri flushed. “Put it on, I’ll show you.” Victor extended his hand, and Yuuri slipped the ring onto his finger. It gleamed in the gold of the afternoon sun: a single blue-white stone on a gold band. Victor slipped the matching ring onto Yuuri’s finger, and suddenly the stones burned bright as young stars, so blinding they both had to shield their gaze. After a moment, the stones’ brilliance faded slightly, now a bright blue almost exactly the color of Victor’s eyes.

“As long as the stone burns bright, my love for you is true,” Yuuri said simply. “And the same goes for the one on my finger.”

Victor clasped Yuuri’s hand, pulling it in close to hold Yuuri’s palm against his heart. “I promise you it will never fade,” he whispered. He pulled Yuuri in for a fierce kiss, and after that all words were set aside for a little while.

It was a stupid, romantic thing for him to do—and dangerous, to bind himself to a human so. Yuuri had lived for four long centuries already as humans reckoned time. He’d seen and done a lot but still looked perhaps twenty-five, the age resting lightly on his bones as it did for all Mab’s children. Time was more fluid for him than it was for humans, a decade passing with as much notice as a week might.

Until he met Victor. 

Yuuri began to experience time as the humans did, each day and night a precious thing never to be recovered once gone. Every afternoon spent without Victor at his side was an eternity, which was why Yuuri always insisted on accompanying him whenever Victor left town—he was as drunk on Victor as Victor was on him, as unwilling to be parted from him for longer than strictly necessary. Victor always relented, quickly realizing that Yuuri was in no danger accompanying him out on a hunt.

But as the time for their wedding drew closer, Victor became secretive. Yuuri wasn’t worried; he could tell Victor was planning some surprise, and that was fine. It wasn’t until Victor announced that he was riding to the next village over, alone, that Yuuri became anxious.

“Let me come with you,” he’d begged, over and over. “Don’t make me stay here waiting for you, please, darling, I beg you.” But Victor had been adamant.

“It’ll be fine, my love,” he’d murmured, peppering Yuuri’s face with sweet kisses, stroking his hair out of his eyes. “It’ll only be a few days, and the distance will make it all the sweeter when we’re finally reunited.” Nothing Yuuri could say or do would dissuade him—Victor wanted to surprise him with some present for their wedding day—and so finally Yuuri relented, agreeing to wait in their house until his beloved returned. Victor kissed him goodbye, brushing his lips over the back’s of Yuuri’s knuckles before kissing his lips. Then he mounted his horse and rode away. 

It was the last time Yuuri would ever see him alive. 

Yuuri waited two days and two nights, unable to rest until he laid eyes on his lover again. His anxiety grew and grew, warning him that something was wrong, that Victor was in danger. He paced the floor of their sweet cottage, wearing a shallow groove in their hunter green carpet, digging his fingernails into his arms as he tried to calm himself. He sang every song he’d ever learned in Mab’s court, trying to chase away the creeping dread of worry for Victor, but nothing worked.

It was nearly dawn the day that Victor was supposed to return when it happened: the brilliance of the stone on Yuuri’s ring suddenly dimmed. Yuuri froze, staring in shock at his finger, then flew out of the house, calling the wind to sweep him into the woods. 

He flew through the trees, faster than human eyes could see, but he still wasn’t quick enough. He found Victor unmoving on the forest floor, his horse long gone, arms and legs bent at an unnatural angle. His throat had been cut—a single slash all the way across, blood soaking the top of his traveling cloak and the ground beneath him. His bags were gone, whatever present he’d wanted to bring Yuuri now with the bandits who’d waylaid him.

Yuuri sank to his knees next to Victor’s body, shock and grief crowding into his throat, stopping his lungs, his heart. He bent over Victor’s chest, cradling his love’s face in his hands, but he couldn’t even catch a glimpse of those unseeing eyes, his own were so blinded with tears. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t comprehend that this had happened—that his darling could have left him so full of life, ready for their future together, and now be lying here like this with all of him gone so far out of Yuuri’s reach.

He’d known from the start that the curse of loving a human would fall heavy on him someday. But he never expected how soon it would come, or how impossible it would be when it arrived. 

Before Yuuri even knew he was going to do it, magic filled his hands, tingling along his lips, searing his eyes: dark magic, a spell he’d sworn to never cast. Yuuri had always been taught that death magic was forbidden, that only wickedness would come of such things. But it wasn’t evil that poured into Yuuri’s hands and heart as he called the magic to seal mud over the slash in Victor’s throat, to force air into his lungs again, to restart his stilled heart:

It was despair. 

_Don’t leave me here alone,_ Yuuri whispered, sealing the spell with the worst, strongest power he’d ever known. He bent over Victor, dragging his lips along cold skin, kissing his clammy lips. _Don’t go where I can’t follow._

Victor sat up with a gasp, choking on dead air. One bloody hand flew up to his own throat as he struggled to breathe, magic warring with nature. Yuuri’s arms were already around him, holding him close to soothe the shock of waking up in a dead body. “Shhhh, it’s okay,” he lied, his voice soft, reassuring. “I’m here. Everything is fine.”

“Yuuri,” Victor croaked. He shuddered, curling into Yuuri’s arms, clutching at Yuuri’s shoulders with cold hands. Yuuri stroked his hair, summoning all the art and magic that he’d ever been gifted with to ease Victor’s re-entry into the world of the living. 

He stayed there a long time, perfecting the spell, smoothing the rough edges, doing his best to make it easier for Victor to pass as human, so long as you didn’t look too closely. He led Victor away from that dark spot of earth to a small cottage deeper in the woods, long-abandoned by its previous occupants. Victor went with him willingly, still bewildered by a body that was not quite right, no matter how Yuuri tried to keep out the cold. 

Yuuri used more magic during that one terrible day than he had in an entire year of working to pass for human as Victor’s lover. He called clean clothes for Victor into being, convinced him to stay in the cottage and wait for Yuuri to return; spelled the cottage so that no one but Yuuri could find it even if they knew where it was; went back to that terrible spot in the middle of the woods and formed a body of clay and stone into Victor’s likeness, then dressed the construct in Victor’s bloody, stained clothes. 

Then all that remained was simply going through the motions.

Victor’s funeral was attended by the entire village, on the day that was to be his wedding, held in the same hollow where he and Yuuri had planned to exchange their vows. Yuuri wore a black cowl over the green gown he was to be married in; he made eye contact with no one and sat in dreadful, aching silence during the entire ceremony. No one noticed the ring on Yuuri’s finger, or how the stone glowed a pale blue, just as it always had. The villagers gave him a wide berth, no doubt blaming him for Victor’s death, and Yuuri was fine with that.

After all, they were right. 

Yuuri retreated to the cottage after that, quietly accepting the cost of his actions. He would have to live alone deep in the woods, far from prying human eyes, to spend the remainder of Victor’s days in solitude. Yuuri had always preferred the quiet anyway, but he knew going in that his sunny, people-loving husband would find the remoteness difficult.

He knew they had only borrowed time, that there was no way this reprieve would last. Even the fae could only hold off death for so long. But Yuuri would take every last minute he could with his husband—no matter how cold Victor’s hands were now, or how clouded his eyes.

* * * * *

Yuuri knew that there were only two ways this would end: either the spell would start to unravel and Victor would creep closer and closer to death before the magic finally gave way, or else Victor would start to question what had brought them to these circumstances, and Yuuri would have to tell him the truth.

But he still isn’t ready for it. So when Victor confronts him in front of the fire, cradles Yuuri’s hands in both of his own and asks him for the truth, it takes all of Yuuri’s considerable strength to get through the tale without breaking down. Yuuri stares at their hands all through the telling of it, unable to meet Victor’s eyes. The shame of what he’s done sits heavy in his stomach, like he’s swallowed ashes and bone. 

“Thank you for telling me,” Victor says. Yuuri swallows and shuts his eyes. He can’t bear to be thanked for finally exposing what a horrible thing he’s done to the person he’s supposed to love most in the whole world. “But you have to know that we can’t do this anymore. It isn’t right, my love. It has to end.”

Yuuri nods. He still can’t look up, even though he knows the amount of time he has left to look on Victor’s face is rapidly dwindling. “I know,” he says numbly. “I thought…” He breaks off, shaking his head. It doesn’t matter. There’s no justifying what he’s done, and he knows it.

He hears Victor sigh. “Darling, look at me,” Victor says. Yuuri forces himself to raise his gaze. He braces himself for the disappointment that must be coming—the condemnation, the hatred, even—but the only thing in his husband’s face is the love that’s been there since the moment they met. Victor smiles at him, and it’s kind.

Yuuri’s eyes sting. The kindness hurts worse than any rebuke would have. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out. Victor reaches out, pulling Yuuri into his arms, and that’s when Yuuri breaks. Soon he’s sobbing, shaking with the grief he’s ignored for months now. His cries echo from the rafters, tears pouring out of him like infection from a wound that’s finally being lanced. 

Victor’s cold arms wrap around him, Victor kissing his hair, murmuring nonsense words into his ears as Yuuri gives vent to all the pain and loss and fear that’s been festering inside him. He holds Yuuri until Yuuri has exhausted himself, and then he kisses away the drying tear-tracks on Yuuri’s cheeks, strokes his damp hair out of his face.

“I love you,” Victor says, simply. Yuuri leans into him, exhausted and helpless in the face of forgiveness he does not deserve and love still being given him long after it should be gone. 

Victor carries him to bed. Whatever he’s become now as a creature held together by Yuuri’s magic, he’s terribly strong, and he has no trouble whatsoever with Yuuri’s weight. Neither does he struggle with knowing where to touch Yuuri, how to kiss him, how tenderly to stroke Yuuri’s body or coax him to pleasure. Even amidst the wreckage of his heart, Yuuri can’t resist his husband for long, and so he doesn’t try. 

They spend hours in their bed, and whether because the magic in Victor is so strong or for some other unspeakable reason, that night feels like what their wedding night might have been: nothing exists except the two of them. For a few terrible, wonderful hours, all there is is Victor’s mouth, and his hands, and the heat that only two bodies moving together can create—even a body as unnaturally cold as Victor’s. Yuuri rides Victor with the same passion as the first time they met in the woods, until their noises shake the walls of their little cottage in the woods, until the rest of the world has fallen away.

It’s good-bye, and Yuuri knows it. 

Finally, when morning is a gray ghost peeking through the window, they’re spent. Yuuri curls against Victor’s chest for the last time, feels his husband’s fingers toying with Yuuri’s hair. It’s grown long since they met that fine afternoon in the woods. How long ago that seems now, Yuuri thinks distantly. 

His grief is not gone, but he’s too exhausted to be ruined by it again right now. Perhaps that was Victor’s plan all along, for he reaches for Yuuri’s jaw, tilting his face up so their eyes meet. “I want you to make me a promise, darling,” he says.

Yuuri swallows, but he nods anyway. “Ask for it, and I will give it to you,” he says. There’s a flicker in the air—more magic, of a kind very old and powerful. 

“Promise me you won’t hurt yourself when I’m gone,” Victor says. 

Did he think his grief had run its course? Apparently, he was wrong. Yuuri’s eyes sting, but he finds his voice after a few hard moments. “I promise,” he says, voice thick.

Victor smiles. “Thank you,” he says. His sincerity is like a knife, carving Yuuri’s heart out of his chest. “And no more death magic. This has to be the end of it, my Yuuri.”

Yuuri lets out a brittle laugh. “That’s two promises,” he says. He tries to smile back, but the edges hurt his face.

“Yuuuuuuri.” Victor cups Yuuri’s face in both hands. 

Yuuri sighs. “I promise,” he whispers. He shuts his eyes.

He feels Victor kiss each of his closed eyelids, his lips no less soft for how cold they are. “Thank you, my darling,” he murmurs. “And now I will make you a promise: we will see each other again. Believe in me.” 

Yuuri gets half a second to wonder at the ridiculousness of this, especially in the face of what Victor just asked him for. Then magic burns the air, a stink like seared metal, vanishing after a few moments to leave only a strange clarity in its wake: a spell-sworn promise, now sealed with their vows. 

After that, they rest. Such is Yuuri’s exhaustion that he does not even open his eyes again for one last look at his beloved before sleep claims him, exhaustion dragging him deep. But he dreams of Victor, Victor as he was in life, bright and charming and so full of energy. He dreams of how Victor’s hair shines silver in the sun, of his bright blue eyes, clear as a summer sky. 

When he wakes, hours have passed, judging by the late afternoon light flooding in through the window. Victor is gone—and the stone on Yuuri’s finger has gone dim. And on the bed next to Yuuri is the matching ring Yuuri gave Victor, its stone still a bright, vibrant blue.

Yuuri rises slowly from the bed. He already knows what he’s going to find; he just isn’t sure he has the strength to face it. He takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders and trying to marshal what remains of his strength; if Victor can love him and comfort him even after what Yuuri did to him, Yuuri can face this last, awful task.

He leaves the little cottage in the middle of the woods, taking only his clothes and the two rings with him; he casts a spell of forgetting on it as he departs, so that no one will ever find it. Yuuri heads towards the village Victor spent most of his life in. Halfway there, he wraps a cloak of shadows around himself, rendering him invisible: his feet make no noise where they tread the forest floor, all his sounds carried away on the whispering wind.

He finds the villagers gathered around an unmoving form on the ground. They’re busy discussing what’s best to do with the body, and no one can seem to agree—they already buried Victor once, but apparently they did it wrong, because he came back to them. 

Unseen, Yuuri stares past them at Victor’s still form. He doesn’t have to hear the villagers talking to know what happened, to know this was one last kindness his dear one did for him: walked into the village in full daylight, knowing full well how his former friends would react at the sight of him. Victor forced his own death so that Yuuri would not have to be the one to take his life. 

Eventually the villagers decide to bury Victor somewhere new, far out in the woods away from the village. They cut off his head for good measure, although they at least bury it with his body. That hurts. But Yuuri understands why they do it, and he already promised Victor he wouldn’t meddle anymore. He waits until they are gone, early the next day, and then he does what he should have done the first time: he plants a tree over Victor’s body. It’s a holly tree, one of Victor’s favorites. Next to the sapling, Yuuri buries the ring he gave his beloved—the one that still burns bright blue with the strength of Yuuri’s devotion. Victor should have it, because Yuuri already knows he’ll never meet another person he wants to give it to. 

Then he leaves. 

Yuuri lets the wind take him. He travels far away from the woods where he spent so much time with Victor, to a distant land across the shining sea. He takes up residence at the edge of a troubled kingdom, and because he promised Victor he wouldn’t hurt himself, he tries to do good instead of hiding away to languish in his own sorrow. Yuuri heals the sick or injured who come his way, quietly redirecting the troubled or angry. He stays out of sight of those who would view him as dangerous and lets time pass him by.

Once more, he slips through years as the fae do, instead of counting days into weeks into months. Years pass, then decades; Yuuri’s little house on the edge of the kingdom becomes a waypoint for weary adventurers who are lucky enough to find it—and if to Yuuri their visits seem incessant, to the humans he’s a much-whispered rumor who will periodically grace a lucky traveler with life-saving magic once or twice a year, at most. 

He passes over a hundred years of mortals in this manner. But finally, one visitor in particular isn’t content to let Yuuri stay a myth. Yuuri makes the mistake of saving the life of a dark-haired handsome stranger who passed out on his front door with a fearful wound. Two weeks after Yuuri sent him on his way, the man returns—this time with a full procession fit for the nobility he clearly is. The dark-haired stranger is none other than the king, and he goes down on one knee to ask for Yuuri’s hand in marriage.

Yuuri turns him down. “My heart has already been given to another,” he says simply. 

The king stands, taking one of Yuuri’s hands in his own. “If you love him, why are you not with him?” he asks. Yuuri looks away and does not answer. “If he’s gone, then you are alone. I would love you every day for the rest of my life, and you would be a great ruler for our people. Please, I beg you, consider my offer.”

“I am sorry,” Yuuri says gently. The king goes away after that, but he returns again the next week, and then the next. Each time Yuuri tells him no, he bows and departs, only to return again. By the fifth time, Yuuri can tell the king will not stop asking until Yuuri consents or vanishes. Yuuri seriously considers relocating, but he’s grown fond of the people of this particular kingdom, and the king’s comment about the good Yuuri could do makes him think of his promise to Victor—and of the scale in his soul that still weighs heavily in favor of the dreadful sin he committed against his beloved.

The seventh time the king asks Yuuri to marry him, Yuuri agrees. He leaves his little house in the woods on the back of the king’s horse, his hand wrapped around the ring that now dangles from a chain around his neck. 

Wedding preparations proceed quickly. Less than a month later, Yuuri stands on the wall of the king’s castle, clad in a gown of royal purple as he stares out over the rolling fields. They are to be married in just days, or so his future bridegroom tells him; Yuuri isn’t really sure. His ring still hangs from a ring around his neck; Yuuri told the king he wouldn’t be parted from it for any reason, and that he would never return the king’s love—and the king has accepted that, with far more grace than Yuuri would have expected. Yuuri wonders what the people will think of their king’s consort when the king has grown old and grey and Yuuri still looks only twenty-five.

Then something impossible happens: the stone on Yuuri’s ring starts to glow. 

Yuuri lifts the ring from where it lies against his chest, staring at it uncomprehendingly. The glow burns brighter and brighter, so bright it hurts to look at. Far down in the castle courtyard, the great front gates swing open. Slowly, unbelievingly, Yuuri turns to look—and sees a tall man astride a brown horse, his silver hair flashing in the sun.

“No,” Yuuri whispers. It’s impossible. It can’t be. His heart beats once in his chest, a painful _thump_. Then Yuuri is flying along the stone parapet, his feet not even touching the flagstones beneath him. The wind sings in his ears, sunlight warm on his skin, and the moments stretch out impossibly long, at odds with the rapid current he’s been swimming in for so long.

The man is climbing down from his horse as Yuuri tears into the courtyard, his heart in his throat. He’s wearing the clothes of some foreign nobility, a sword strapped to his hip, a bow across his back. He turns, and Yuuri sees the ring on his hand, the stone shining the same bright blue as the stranger’s clear eyes. His gaze meets Yuuri’s. A smile blooms across his face, blinding as the sun. 

“Where did you get that ring?” Yuuri demands. He stops just feet from the stranger, his hands trembling, ears ringing. He can’t seem to catch his breath.

“I found it in the branches of a huge holly tree, deep in the woods in a land far from here,” says the man. Yuuri’s heart stops. The man takes a few steps closer, his eyes never leaving Yuuri’s. “I dreamed that if I put it on, the stone would lead me to my true love.”

Yuuri has to swallow twice before he can get more words out. “You’re a foolish man, to put such stock in dreams,” he gets out at last. 

The stranger’s smile softens, and he closes the distance between them, reaching out to take Yuuri’s hands in his own. “Then let me be a fool,” he murmurs. “For it led me here to you.”

“What is your name?” Yuuri asks shakily. Gods above, his hands are so warm. His hair is shorter than it was, not the long cascade it used to be, but—

“Viktor,” says the stranger. “My name is Viktor.” 

Yuuri smiles at him. The expression hurts, like his face had forgotten it. “My name is Yuuri,” he whispers. “I’ve been waiting for you, Viktor.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor breathes. He opens his arms, and Yuuri flies into them, flinging his own arms around Viktor’s neck—Viktor’s mouth is on his, Viktor’s warm body against his, Viktor’s heart beating strong and true against his chest. And Yuuri knows that this time, nothing will ever come between them again.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was heavily inspired both by the Hozier song "Like Real People Do" and the Maddy Prior song "Hind Horn," which is I believe an old English folk song. And yes, the nameless king is meant to be JJ, although it's not particularly important if you realized that or not.


End file.
